


Two Badass Lady Veterans

by sunkelles



Series: Femslash February 2018 [6]
Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Femslash February, Gay Mentors, San Junipero, self discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 05:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13710435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: Penelope doesn’t have much of a social life. Honestly, you could call her social life “nonexistent” at this point. She goes to work. She goes home. She goes to therapy. The only other thing that she can make time for is hanging out with Jill.Her mamí might call that queeerrrrrrrr





	Two Badass Lady Veterans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [titaniumsansa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/titaniumsansa/gifts).



> that feel when your daughter has to mentor you on your sexuality because you're just realizing you're bi and she's an experienced lesbean
> 
> what is a timeline? i don't know. just put this in season 2 but assume that the thing with max didn't happen

Penelope doesn’t have much of a social life. Honestly, you could call her social life “nonexistent” at this point. She goes to work. She goes home. She goes to therapy. The only other thing that she can make time for is hanging out with Jill.

Sure, she _has_ other friends. She just doesn’t have time for them. Jill takes up the last little sliver of her life that she can carve up, and she’s not going to cut into her Jill time to give it to someone else.

No offense to them, but there’s just something about spending time with Jill that just rejuvenates her. She loves her family, she does, she just can’t break down around them. She only wants them to see the badass parts of her that came back from war; she doesn’t want them to see the broken ones. But she and Jill can crack a joke about it and then pick up the pieces together.

Tonight they’ve just seen a movie- an overly dramatic historical drama about the Victorian Period that Penelope would regret wasting her money on if being with Jill wasn’t so fun in and of itself. Then, they went to get ice cream. Penelope digs her spoon into her last scoop of strawberry ice cream and shovels it into her mouth.

“That was such a telenovela twist,” Penelope says, rolling her eyes, “I can’t believe they decided to go with that.”

“Thought you liked telenovelas, Alvarez?” Jill asks. It’s the same sort of teasing that Jill normally uses, but there’s something off about her tone. Penelope can’t quite put her finger on what it is, though.

“Sure, I _love_ telenovelas, but I don’t want _movies_ to be like that. I want telenovelas to be telenovelas and movies to not be, you know?” Jill doesn’t look like she knows, but she doesn’t object. She looks too… nervous to object, which is weird.

“Are you alright, Jill?” Penelope asks. Jill takes a deep breath.

“I want to be upfront about something with you,” Jill says, carefully enunciating each word. The words sound painful, like she’s forcing herself to say them. Penelope doesn’t think that can be a good sign.

“You don’t need me to help you hide a body, right?” Penelope jokes.

“No,” Jill says, sounding a little nervous, “nothing like that.”

“Then what’s got you all nervous?” Penelope asks, “don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous before.” Jill’s always seemed unflappable to her. She’s seen her bare bits of Jill's soul at group, but she was always comfortable then. She had decided that she was going to let herself unravel. She doesn’t think that Jill has had any say in the matter of unraveling today.

“I like you, Alvarez." Jill says this like it’s painful to admit instead of just obvious.

“Of course you do,” Penelope says, playfully nudging her shoulder, “I like you too. That’s what friends do, right?” She doesn’t really see what the other woman is getting at here. They like each other. That’s why they hang out so much. It’s not rocket science.

“No,” Jill says, her voice wavering a little, “I mean I want to _date_ you.”

“Oh,” Penelope says. She doesn’t really know how to respond to that. It’s definitely not what she was expecting.

“Yeah,” Jill says, “it’s alright if you don’t want to, I just wanted you to know.”

“I dont... I don’t know,” Penelope says. She’s never thought about dating a woman. Before Elena came out to her, she might have even been homophobic about it. Right now she’s just confused. She doesn’t know for a fact that her answer is no. She just doesn’t know how to feel about it.

“Alright,” Jill says. Her voice is still uneven, but not as much as before. She sounds like she just got off of a fair ride instead of stumbling home blackout drunk.

“I’ll take you home,” Jill says. They walk back to Jill's car and drive back in uncomfortable semi-silence. Then, she drops Penelope off at the door to her apartment complex instead of the door to her apartment.

Jill doesn’t ask her to go to the movies next weekend. Or a festival. Or to get their hair done or to watch a play or go get ice cream or watch pro football at her place or any of the tons of things that they’ve grown accustomed to doing together.

She just says, “See you at group next week.”

“Cool,” Penelope says. She feels empty as Jill walks away, but she doesn’t know what else she could even say. Alex is sitting on the couch, playing some game on his I-Pad. Her mother is flipping through one of her old Vanidades magazines. Then, Elena comes bounding through the hallway and into the living room. 

"Guys," Elena says, "I have the  _best_ idea for a family movie night." 

"Lupita has a paper due Friday at midnight," her mother says, not even looking up from her magazine, "I do not think she can watch movies this Friday." 

“I actually don’t have plans on _Saturday_ night,” Penelope says, "we could move movie night until then?" 

“You don’t? I thought you always did stuff with Jill on Saturday nights?” Elena asks, sounding a little concerned.

“Jill already had plans,” Penelope lies.

“Nice,” Elena says.

“It’s nice that she had plans?” Penelope asks.

“I mean, now you can come to our movie night,” Elena says, "it can be all four of us!" 

“Count _me_ out,” Alex says.

“You can’t have a family movie night without the family, Alex,” Elena says. Alex rolls his eyes.

“ _I_ have plans,” he says with all of his thirteen year old boy swagger, “I’m not missing _my_ movie so that I can watch Elena’s gay love story of the week.”

“This one’s not a gay love story,” she says, pointing a finger to the sky just like her abuelita, “it’s a socially conscious action movie starring a woman of color!”

“Gee,” Alex says, “I’m _so_ much more interested now.”

“If Alex already has plans, that’s alright,” Penelope says, “then it can just be the three of us.”

“The two of you,” her mother says, “I have tickets to the opera!” Elena lets out a happy squeal, even though this means she won’t be attending movie night.

“You and Dr. Berkowitz are seeing each other again?” Penelope asks.

“We were never seeing each other to begin with,” her mother says, adamantly. Then she smiles a little.

“But we are now,” she admits. Penelope smiles.

“I’m happy for you, mamí. You two are good for each other.” She’s never understood it and she doubts she ever will, but her mom and her boss just kind of _click._

“So,” Elena says, “movie night will just be us. That’s fine.” Elena’s eyes widen.

“Maybe we can watch Black Lightning afterwards!” Elena exclaims. “You don’t want Alex seeing all that gore, so it would be a good chance for us to start it together.” Part of the reason that Penelope doesn’t want Alex watching all the gore is that she’s not the biggest fan of it herself. Apparently, active combat makes someone less interested in seeing extreme violence on screen than they were to begin with. Who knew?

But she’s willing to take one for the team on this one, since it’s one of Elena’s favorite shows at the moment. Teenage girls don’t normally want to hang out with their moms. At least, Penelope didn’t want to when she was Elena’s age. She _loves_ that her daughter wants to spend time with her, and she’s going to soak up every minute of it that she can.

 

So she tries to look forward to having their mother daughter movie night all week and tries to forget that means that she won’t be hanging out with Jill.

 

She’s excited about it, she really is. It’s just that she really wants to tell Jill how excited she is that Elena wants to spend time with her. And she wants to do it over ice cream while they laugh about shit other people said at group and Jill’s newest hell customer story and just enjoy each other’s company. She misses the laughter and the eye contact and the feeling of being _known._

They barely talked at group this week, and Penelope feels like there’s a gaping hole in her chest where Jill Riley should be. 

Saturday finally comes, and the morning and afternoon march on without much ceremony. Then evening comes and she and Elena get ready for their movie night. The rest of the family leaves, and she and Elena pop popcorn and raid her stash of movie candy before they curl up on the couch with a blanket and a two liter bottle of coke to refill their glasses.

“So,” Elena says, “I was thinking we could watch this movie with a strong woman of color in the lead role or we could just power through Black Lightning. What do you think, mom?”

“We _could_ watch one of your gay love story movies, you know,” Penelope says, “I won’t complain like Alex would.”

“Alex just doesn’t like romances,” Elena says, “he hasn’t outgrown that toxic masculinity yet.” As much as she loves that Elena can be patient with Alex when his social justice doesn’t quite match up with hers, Penelope really kind of wants to watch one of those gay love stories. 

“But we _could_ watch one, if you wanted to,” Penelope says, “No toxic masculinity here. Just some mother-daughter bonding… that could be gay… if you wanted.” Penelope feels like she’s stumbling all over her words. She doesn’t even know what she wants to say, really. She just- she kind of wants to watch two women fall in love right now. Just to see what it would be like, sort of a test run.

“Mom,” Elena says, “I know you support me, but you’re going back into aggressive territory now- like when I first came out. Is there something wrong?” Penelope hates feeling so weak and vulnerable around Elena. She’s the parent. She doesn’t want to have to lean on Elena’s shoulder for comfort, but thinks that she might have to in this instance. Elena came out to her all those months ago, even though she was scared of what she would think. Elena had been so willing to confide in her. Penelope feels like she owes her that same courtesy.

“Jill told me that she liked me last week,” Penelope admits.

“Of course she likes you,” Elena says, “you guys are always doing _something_ together. Movies, ice cream, going to festivals- even that play!” Then Elena’s eyes widen.

“Wait,” Elena says, “you mean in a gay way, right?”

“Yeah,” Penelope says, feeling weird even as she says it, “in a gay way.”

“Oh,” Elena says, pausing awkwardly, “you two have an “I’m not gay but you think I am” situation.”

“I don’t know,” Penelope admits. She’s heard Elena’s talks about sexuality enough times now that they’re cemented into her brain. She knows that people can be bisexual or pansexual or asexual and all these other things that form a big old rainbow spectrum of sexualities. She knows that just because she’s always liked men before doesn’t mean that she can’t like a woman, but it’s just hard to wrap her brain around. She’s always thought of herself as straight.

Elena’s eyes widen and a smile reaches across her face.

“You mean you like her back!”

“I don’t know,” Penelope says. She’s just never even had to think about this. She liked men. She was straight. That was all that there was to it. But now she has a lesbian daughter with a nonbinary girlfriend and a best friend who’s another woman who wants to date her and Penelope might want to date her back. Things are just so much more complicated than they used to be.

“Well,” Elena says, “how do you feel when you’re with her?” Penelope takes a deep breath. She wants to try to explain all her tangled thoughts and feelings about Jill Riley.

“I feel at home,” Penelope says, “like right there, with her, is exactly where I’m supposed to be.” She knows how the words sound the moment that they leave her lips.

“That’s not a very straight thing to say, mom,” Elena says. Penelope knows that. It doesn’t sound very straight. It doesn’t sound very straight at all.

“Abuelita might even call it,” Elena bats her eyelashes and singsongs, “ _queer_!” She cracks a smile at that, even through her longing. 

“I just miss her so much,” Penelope admits. They’ve just been such a constant presence in each other’s lives lately. Not seeing her this weekend or talking at group or sending each other stupid jokes whenever they think of them- it feels barren. It feels like something important died.

“Okay,” Elena says, “let’s watch a gay movie then.” Elena puts on San Junipero, which Penelope’s heard her rant and rave about but has never watched herself. She cries a lot more than she’s willing to admit. She’s over-joyed and she’s gutted and she doesn’t know which one she feels more strongly about.

“So,” Elena says, perfectly chipper, “what did you think?”

“What do _you_ think?” Penelope asks in all of her teary-eyed glory. Elena laughs, and pulls her in for a hug.

“Welcome to Sapphic Junipero,” Elena says, “population: crying gay women.”

“ _You_ aren’t crying,” Penelope accuses.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Elena says, “I cried the first ten times. Now my tears are just on the inside.”

“That movie was really beautiful,” Penelope says. She doesn’t think that she’s ever experienced that many emotions in such a short period of time about a movie.

“Yeah,” Elena says, “it’s really something. Granted, its a little ableist, but it’s pretty good at everything else.” Penelope doesn’t think that she knows what ableism even means, even after all of Elena’s little lectures. She thinks that she’ll have to ask about that later.

All she can do right now, though, is think about Kelly and Yorkie and their second chance at life and love. Penelope doesn’t want to lose hers. Maybe she won’t propose marriage and then permanently relocate to the electronic afterlife for Jill, but Penelope wants to give this thing a chance.

“I’m gonna talk her,” Penelope says, “I think I want to try this.”

“Really?” Elena asks with a hopeful look. 

“Yeah,” she says, “I think I like her back.” It’s weird admitting that out loud. She’s always thought of herself as straight, but now she’s not sure that she ever was. Thinking about what Kelly said about all of her little crushes on women, Penelope thinks that she can remember at least a few women that she liked and she distanced herself from because she liked them. She feels her whole perception of herself rearranging itself under the weight of this newfound realization.

“You won’t regret it, mom,” Elena says, “I can tell you really like her.”

“Can you not tell your abuelita and Alex?” Penelope says, “I want to see if this goes anywhere first.” Elena nods.

“Can do, mom,” Elena says, “take all the time you need. But really, if you want it go somewhere, I’m sure that it will.”

“What do you mean?” Penelope asks.

“You’re a real catch, you know? Badass vet, stable career,” Elena grins a shit-eating grin as she adds, “a beautiful, perfect family.” Penelope rolls her eyes.

“Jill’s already met you all,” Penelope says, “she knows all your flaws. Might be enough to scare her away, actually.”

“Flaws? What flaws?” Elena asks.

“God, you sound just like mamí right now,” Penelope says. Then, she hears the door open. 

“Elena? Sounds like me?” her mother says, bursting through the door, “it must be a miracle!” Elena and Penelope share a look, and then they start laughing.

“What did I miss?” she asks. Then, the spell of their gay mother-daughter night is broken and family life has returned to normal.

Penelope waits a few days to make sure that the decision is final, that she really wants to do this, before she texts Jill. After three days of not changing her mind, Penelope texts Jill and asks her to meet up next Saturday when they both have some free time.

They meet at one of their favorite coffee shops and they each get a froufrou beverage that they make jokes about civilian women loving and would never admit to liking themselves.

“It’s been awhile,” Jill says, “how are you doing?”

“I’m doing alright,” Penelope says, “I’ve actually realized something.” Jill sends her a hopeful look.

“Yeah, and what would that be?”

“I like you, Jill,” Penelope says, “and I think I want to date you too.”

“Really?” Jill asks. She sounds very skeptical.

“Yes, Jill,” Penelope says, “why would I lie about that?”

“I don’t know, you just kind of freaked out about it when I told you that I liked you,” Jill says, “I wasn’t expecting you to like me back.”

“My daughter’s a lesbian,” Penelope says, “I’m not homophobic, I’d just, I’d never really thought about _myself_ that way before, you know?”   
  
“Yeah,” Jill says, “I understand. It’s like that for a lot of bi women. I didn’t realize _I_ was ‘til I was in the army.”

“Oh,” Penelope says, “that must have been-” Penelope realizes halfway through her sentence that she doesn’t know how to end it. She doesn’t know what adjective she could even find to describe that.

“It wasn’t fun, at least,” Jill says. That sounds like the understatement of the year. 

“Was it one woman or was it women in general?” Penelope asks. Jill sends her a confused look. Penelope realizes that she needs to elaborate.

“I mean, for me it was you that made me realize, but for Elena it was more of general thing. She just knew she liked women.”

“Oh,” Jill says, finally catching onto her drift, “It was just one woman. I loved her so much, and I never told her. Some of it was 'cause of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, but some of it was just 'cause I was scared of how she’d react.” Penelope can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.

“Turns out she _was_ gay,” Jill says, “she sent me a friend request on Facebook a few years back and I saw that she was happily married to another woman.”

“I’m sorry,” Penelope says. She’s not sure that’s the right thing to say, but she feels like she needs to say _something._

“It’s alright. It was my own fault for not just taking the chance with her, but that’s why I told you even though I thought you were straight. Didn’t want to have that regret with you,” she says, “I really like you, Alvarez.”

“I really like you too, _Riley_ ,” Penelope says, “I missed you so much.”

“It was just a week, Alvarez,” Jill says.

“It felt like forever,” Penelope says, “why were you avoiding me anyway?” Penelope’s still a little mad about that to be honest. She was a little worried that Jill hated her now.

“I thought you didn’t like me back,” Jill says, “I wanted to give you some space.”

“That makes sense,” Penelope says. She doesn’t add _in hindsight_ because she doesn’t want Jill to know how her paranoid mind filled in the details.

“So,” Jill asks, “where do we go from here?”

“Well,” Penelope says, “I was thinking we’d run by the gas station to pick up some cheap snacks and catch a matinee.”

“I meant in our relationship, Alvarez,” Jill says.

“Oh,” Penelope says, “I guess we date. We go back to doing what we were doing, but we add some more hand holding. Some kissing.” Penelope feels her cheeks heating, but she doesn’t want to stop talking before she summons the courage to say it.

“Maybe some sex too.” She’s been thinking about it, a lot, and the more that she runs it over in her head the more into the idea she becomes. Every time she runs it over in her head she wonders how she _never_ realized she was into women before this. Jill starts laughing, long and loud.

“Oh, Alvarez,” she says, “you’ll have to buy me dinner first.

“I think I can manage that,” Penelope says, sending her a wry smile. Jill smiles, and it seems like her eyes light up. Yeah, Penelope _knows_ she can manage that. Two badass lady veterans like them? If anyone can manage this, they can.


End file.
